Let's play a game

Can you find all of the Cheerios?

Mowing with daddy

Garage sale shopping

Because I am my mother, I have an obsession with garage sales. And luckily that season is now upon us. We went out yesterday and today and found several fun things - clothes and shoes for Luke, some books, puzzles, a basketball goal, refrigerator magnets, some shelves, a step stool, and some other miscellaneous things. Luke has been such a trooper through it all, although it finally wore him out this morning.


(On a side note, he was also a trooper because he put up with watching the Royal Wedding with my mom and I.)


Back to the garage sale finds:

Here he is playing with a new puzzle, while sitting in a new booster seat.


And now for the favorite purchase. While I was searching garage sale ads on CraigsList I saw that one in Fishers had the Step 2 rollercoaster. I emailed her on Thursday to see about buying it early but she wanted too much for it. It's not something that I was actually looking for or needed, but I thought it looked cool if I could get a good deal. We went by her sale on Friday and she still wanted too much. I went back over there today at 2:30 (the sale ended at 3) and she had marked it down quite a bit. I offered even less, and now we own a roller coaster! Luke is a fan!


It's good for just laying on too.

Shopping at Lowes

Luke and Pickles

I'm not entirely sure why he was doing this, or why she was letting him. Regardless, good times had by all!

If you watch towards the end, after Pickles jumped down - I'm convinced that he goes around to the side of the chair to tell her to get back on. When she doesn't, I'm pretty sure he thinks he's going to pick her up.

A moment I'll never forget

I've posted video of how Luke will give kisses when you ask him (or he'll smack you in the face, depending on his mood!)

Last night though, as I was getting ready to put him to bed, I kissed him goodnight. And with no prompting at all, he turned and kissed me back! My heart melted. I love this little boy!

Mr. Muscle Man

Where did Luke go?

I heard noises in the living room and came in to find this:



Apparently a ball had rolled under there and he was trying to get it and got stuck, so he just decided to hang out there for a little while.

Happy Easter!

The Easter bunny came to visit our house!


Oh wait, that was last year. Don't worry - he came this year too.


Luke got a Mickey Mouse clubhouse book, some colored bubbles, some flashcards, a car shaped piggy bank, and eggs filled with puffs and yogurt melts.



Playing with the flashcards. They are "touch and feel" so for instance, the puppy dog has fur you can pet.


We also colored some more this morning (this seems to be Luke's favorite thing to do right now.)


And then we watched TV like a superstar. (He got these glasses last week at school and LOVES to wear them.)


Happy Easter everyone!

A meeting with the Easter bunny

We took Luke to go see the Easter Bunny on Friday. I was convinced it would be a disaster, but he seemed to love him! He watched some other kids sitting on his lap and just started pointing at him. When he came to be his turn we even got some smiles!


A blast from the past ...

Pictures and videos from a Saturday afternoon

Coloring Easter bunny pictures with daddy. For some reason, Luke loves the brown one. He automatically picks it first and if you hide it from him he looks all over for it.


Along with coloring I had an idea that we'd glue cotton balls onto a picture of an Easter bunny. Luke wanted nothing to do with that.


Playing with our two favorite things - balls and books


Cat toys are fun too!


Boom goes the dynamite! (Earlier in the day Jason taught Luke to fling water up in the air and go "Boom!") When we went out later Luke showed me how it was done.


And lastly, Luke loves his kitty cat - and she loves him as long as he's on the other side of the screen.

Temper tantrums already?

We were coloring before bedtime tonight and when I told Luke we had to put it away to go to bed, I got this reaction.

Happy Thursday!

(Ok, so the picture was actually taken on Monday, but Happy Thursday anyways!)

14 months old

Age: 14 months

Weight: Somewhere between 25 and 26 lbs

Length: not sure

Size: Size 4 diapers, and mostly 18 month clothes. 12 month pants are now too short.

Hair: blondish brown. It starts to curl when it gets longer - we took him last week to have it cut again.

Teeth: Working on #12 (the last 1 year molar)

Sleeping: Still great at night - 7pm to 6:30am. He likes to take a book to bed with him now and it's one of the first things he grabs when he wakes up in the morning. Naps are going better too. At school he takes one nap, for about 2 hours (on a cot!) At home he takes one in the morning and another in the afternoon.

Eating: We struggle here. He's 100% on table foods, but is so picky! Tonight all he wanted was yogurt and cheerios. Not quite a balanced meal there. He hates all fruit - and likes to hide it in his tray. He loves fruit flavored things though.

Movement: He's walking!!! We'll consider it official as of the 17th (day before 14 months old) - he took 6-8 steps that day. Now (3 days later) he can walk across the room!

Talking: mama, dada/dadee, ba (ball), bo (book), baboo/bubu (puppy). We've also seen him sign milk, eat, sleep, and please. When he watches Signing Time his little hands twitch like he's just dying to try.

Milestones: walking!

Favorite toys/activities: Reading a book, playing with balls, being outside, coloring (especially with the bathtub crayons)

Dislikes: fruit, being laughed at, being told no

Disposition: Quite the happy little guy but can be quite ornery. He also is getting more demanding when he wants something.

Other cute (and not so cute) things about him:
*he loves to wash his hands before/after meals.
*he lays his head down when you ask him if he wants to go to sleep.
*he gives kisses!
*he knows what going outside means - and goes to the door when you say outside
*he's in a hitting stage, which apparently is normal. We're working on getting him to stop though. When we tell him he has to be nice/gentle/easy with the kitties he'll stop and pet them. At school he started to hit someone and I told him that he had to be easy - so he pet her head instead.

And now for some more walking video:



The end of this one is hilarious - he was going so fast that he didn't stop and bounced back off of the ball

A boy and his hat

Random phone pics

Here are some of the pictures that I've taken on my phone in the last month or so. Playing fireman at Grandma and Grandpa's house (I didn't actually take this one - Luke spent the weekend with them and Grandma sent me this picture.)
Using his bathtub crayons - he LOVES them
Going for a walk! He had to have his drink - mommy and daddy were both carrying drinks too (that might have possibly been of the alcoholic variety.)
A new trick - climbing on the fireplace.

Shopping with mommy - we stopped at the cookie place and they had perfect little Luke sized cookies

At the Nike outlet store in Florida

Seeing daddy after a few days apart - in the Orlando airport right when we got off the plane
At the hospital before his tubes surgery - I think this was about 5:30 in the morning
Messy eater!

Walking!

Look at him go!!

Giving kisses

Luke learned to give kisses last week and those big slobbery open mouthed ones are the best!

How to hide food that you don't want - by Luke Fletcher

Luke's 12 month pictures!

Ok, so we're almost 2 months late, but they turned out great! Karen went to the IMA with Luke and I today and did such a great job! Here are some of my favorites!








This bench was in memory of someone with the last name of Fletcher!

Luke and his girlfriends

My friend Tricia has 2 twin girls - Kate and Anna, who were born 2 1/2 weeks before Luke. They were at Luke's very first playdate, and they're now in his class at school. It's fun watching them grow up!

April 2010 (Their friend Aaron was also there. Luke is in the blue.)


April 2011


And apparently there is specifically something going on with Kate. This was a playdate back in June of 2010. Should we order the wedding announcements?


And then yesterday when I picked him up, Luke was being a little flirt. He would take Kate's pacifier, laugh, then give it back to her. Then repeat. She didn't seem to mind at all though!

Mr. Sensitive

I don't have any pictures of this, or video (because that would just be mean) but Luke gets his feelings hurt pretty easily, and it's the cutest thing ever. If he thinks you're laughing AT him, his little face crumples up, he looks down, and starts to cry. And then of course it's near impossible not to keep laughing (bad parents!)

Reading

I've been worried that Luke hasn't seem interested in books. I love to read, and always have, and really hoped it would be something Luke would enjoy. I know, I know - he's only 13 months old - but it seems that so many toddlers LOVE books and he has wanted nothing to do with them. I worried that we didn't read to him enough the last year and that's why he wasn't interested.

Luckily that has all changed! He loves books, especially big ones with pictures. He likes to point out things and have you tell him what they are.

And even more exciting - he can say book! Well, sort of - he says "bo!" The k gets dropped off. He's very consistent though and it's obvious that's what he's saying and wants. He'll be in the middle of playing, spy a book out of the corner of his eye, say "bo!" and go get it. I just love it!

He's pretty good at pointing out the balls and kitty cat when you ask him where they are.



Not the greatest, but you can sort of hear him say "bo" here.

Eating

Luke really loves to try and feed himself and has been doing such a great job with it! Applesauce and yogurt are the easiest with a spoon - he can just dip the spoon down in and he'll get something on it. Forks are hard - he'll pick up the food and try to put it on the fork but doesn't have much luck.

A video from applesauce last night:


I turned my back after making sure he was ok and when I looked back at him I saw this:

Stairs

Luke has been going up the stairs for awhile now, and we've finally taught him how to go back down without going head first. He does better if you stay above him - if you're on the steps below him he wants to turn and look at you. It's a slow process, but it's nice to have a break from carrying him up and down them!

Weekend update

I feel like it's been awhile since I've blogged, so I thought I'd do a bit of an update first. When we got back from vacation, I ended up sick with a cold, then sinus infection, then bronchitis. That knocked me on my butt and for several days I felt just awful. Luckily that is getting better!

Luke managed to avoid that, but his teeth have been a nightmare. His molars are taking forever to come in - and at this point we're working on all 4 of them. He's ok during the day, but at night it is awful - he's up crying every hour or so. I've spent several nights sleeping in the floor next to the crib so that I can reach my hand in easily and pat his back. Also, on Thursday I got a phone call from daycare that he had a temperature of 103.6! No other symptoms so we think it was just a strange virus that's been going around. Ibprofen brought it down and it hasn't gone back up since then.

In house news - we now have a fenced backyard! We had a 6 foot shadow box privacy fence installed and just love it. It makes our yard feel bigger and more private which will be so nice this summer while we're playing with Luke outside.

We also brought over the Little Tikes swingset that we bought in the fall. We found it on Craigslist and got a great deal on it and stored it at my mom's. Luke got to play on it yesterday and LOVED it!

It wouldn't be a good blog post without some pictures, so here you go!

Grandma and Grandpa came up and we went to the children's museum and then to McCallisters for lunch. Luke showed grandpa how to play at the water table.



Then he had a great big boy meal of mac & cheese, applesauce, milk, and teddy grahams. It was the most he's had to eat in several days and the best he's done at a restaurant.


Playing with the new swingset!


He also figured out that he loves going down the slides on his belly.